[B-Greek] GNT books in order of difficulty
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 2 22:58:16 EST 2008
Jim Montesano wrote:
"My question is what is the list from the easier to the more harder books to
read in the NT, and be able to translate on the spot? Also, is there a list
like this for the Septuagint, or at least a place to start?"
Everyone's list is a little different.
JOHN (narrative is easier because you can guess the
meaning as you follow the story. JOHN is also in my
opinion beautiful, brilliant, artful Greek, easy for beginers
but satisfying for advanced readers)
REVELATION (a little tricky in terms of vocabulary but the
syntax and word order is simple and close to English (because
it is close to Hebrew)
MARK (a little harder than JOHN because it's less polished)
1 JOHN (easy in both vocab and syntax)
MATTHEW
ACTS 1-12 (the first half of Acts is much easier in terms of
vocab and syntax)
2 JOHN
GALATIANS and PHILLIPIANS and PHILEMON and 1 CORINTHIANS
(I find these to be much easier than the rest of the Pauline corpex)
LUKE (much more complex syntax than the other Gospels)
3 JOHN (quite a bit harder than 1 JOHN, with several tough
constructions in a short letter.)
1 THESSALONIANS and 2 THESSALONIANS
COLOSIANS and EPHESIANS
ROMANS (hard I think because the subject
matter is subtle and complex)
JAMES (in my opinion the most satisfying
Greek in the NT; hard but not frustrating)
1 PETER (hard because it is good Greek)
JUDE AND 2 PETER (hard because it is
bad Greek)
1 and 2 TIMOTHY and TITUS (much less
fun to read than the rest of Paul)
ACTS 11-28 (lots of hard vocab, some tricky
classical constructions in the speeches, and
hard to keep straight all the travel)
HEBREWS (word order is a challenge)
2 CORINTHIANS (for some reason by far
the hardest. I think Paul was deeply
agitated when he wrote it. It has taken
reading through it about five times to
appreciate it, but it was awful the first
few times.)
As far as the LXX goes, I have not read it
anyway near as much, but I would say
the Genesis 1-15 is pretty easy and the
Psalms are generally not that tough.
A lot of the LXX is easier than the NT,
but I found WISDOM 8 to be harder even
than HEBREWS.
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